Russia under political and media attack. It is not a syndrome but a suspect. The attack comes from afar.
Let's go to order.
The rebirth of Moscow's imperial ambitions in the new millennium does not break with the influence of the Orthodox Church in Kremlin politics. In a relationship of mutual assistance, the Church and politics consolidated each other, weaving the basis of the current system of power.
What the Russian Federation represents today has already been dealt with extensively on this address book.
To better understand how much this aspect counts in Putin's current geopolitical location, it is good to frame the direct and indirect objectives of his frequent references to Christianity and the defense of traditional values:
- to distinguish oneself from Western society (above all European), now held hostage by a laicity poured into exasperated secularism
- self-defining oneself as the ultimate defense of identity and faith (albeit orthodox) against the encirclement of motivated non-Christian cultures and on a war footing. The war on radical Islam falls within this horizon.
Among the contents that Putin's chair with the Church brings with him, there is undoubtedly the defense of the traditional family, with inevitable choices counter-trend with respect to the single global thinking on the front of unions, adoptions and more generic rights for the homosexual world.
The feverish obsession with which the theme was treated in the West in the last decade has led to a Cold War opposition even in the field of so-called civil rights. The first opportunity to manifest friction was the attempt to boycott the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.
Sport as a political weapon? Thinking of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, we don't say anything new.
However, the examples of today flock according to a curious cadence. The corruption scandal within FIFA that erupted in 2015 suddenly involved pockets of power that had previously been considered unassailable. The removal of Blatter, an absolute political earthquake, thus ended up touching the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the next world championship for the god of the ball.
Today we talk about the World Anti Doping Agency that puts its nose in Russian athletics, fresh from the record at the 2013 World Cup on Americans, rivals of all time. The scandal extends to involve political leaders and tarnish the image of the country of which sport is a showcase.
Even sinning with ingenuity, it would be foolish to close your eyes to the use of doping substances that have been widely used in the former Soviet bloc for decades. Even if the Lander of the former GDR today does not produce bunches of gold medals, it is not difficult to guess that in many political-sporting laboratories of the East certain habits are difficult to die, especially because of the media prestige that sport gives to the systems of reference.
However, doubt remains about timing.
That FIFA is not a coven of philanthropists has been known since man invented the ball; the rot, however, has only just now emerged close to the 2018 World Cup. Even pediatricians know that in athletics (and not only) pharmacists are at least as important as sneakers. Why these findings are happening right now, however, is a legitimate question.
According to Russian sports minister Vitali Mutko, the IAFF (the world Federatletics) would have hidden from the 2008 the results of 155 doping tests of which only 15 against fellow athletes.
In short, the triple step, Sochi-World-Doping over two years, is at least suspect. Are Russia and its image under attack?
When the scandals return and what the consequences are on the sporting and economic level it is not known. On the other hand, it is easy to imagine the image damage to Russia in the collective iconography. Sport and geopolitics go hand in hand since the time of the Marathon battle of the rest ...
In the global society, trouble is not always possible to hide. In the apparent democracy of the multimedia society, on the other hand, it is very easy to direct them.
(photo: Tass / Wada)
